I have taken whale-watching boat rides off Newport Beach many times, and seen many beautiful things. But there's always new beauty nature has ready to surprise us.

“A Humpback Whale producing a nice rainbow off the coast of Newport Beach. Royce Hutain was the captain of his boat while I flew my aerial camera and Jason Anderson had a second aerial camera. This was filmed on 7/5/15.”

Here's another similar clip from a few years ago, this one off the coast of Nova Scotia.

About two thousand feet (598 meters) below the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, remotely operated vehicle Hercules encountered a magnificent sperm whale.

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About two thousand feet (598 meters) below the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, remotely operated vehicle Hercules encountered a magnificent sperm whale.

The scientists operating the ROV were recording footage when it happened.

The whale circled Hercules several times and gave our cameras the chance to capture some incredible footage of this beautiful creature. Encounters between sperm whales and ROVs are incredibly rare. E/V Nautilus is exploring the ocean studying biology, geology, archeology, and more.

“My daughter Katie was resolute in entering a remembrance for her grandfather, Ed, and having secured a lantern, we were able to honor loved ones for family, friends, and coworkers as well,” Ryan says.

Thalassophobes and NSFW-phobes will want to skip this beautiful short about deepwater free diver Guillaume Néry and the kinds of hypoxia-induced hallucinations he experiences when free diving to depths beyond 100 meters. Thalassophiles who love beautiful underwater cinematography and trippy dream sequences will find the underwater footage hypnotic.

My friend, former NPR colleague, and longtime journalism mentor Alex Chadwick has an incredible new radio documenting hitting the public radio airwaves this week. We're sharing it here on Boing Boing before it hits the radio-waves. I asked Alex to tell us a little about 'Rising Seas.' He explains:

The Rising Seas project grew out of an encounter at an MIT energy seminar almost a year ago. I met an Americanized Brit, Dr. Len Berry, from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He's been speaking forcefully and clearly about the threat that rising seas present. At the end of his talk, I asked if Miami is a viable city. He smiled and answered, 'well, it is right now'.

And then I asked about the end of the century. He smiled again, but said nothing.

I've been talking to him ever since, and through him I met two other FAU scientists -- both much younger -- early to later 30's, both moms, both troubled that hardly anyone in south Florida seems aware of what they are facing.

I got fascinated with this place, and with this story, and spent more time on it than I usually do -- and then found it very difficult to write. I knew too much, and I couldn't leave out parts that I liked.

Finally, I wound up building there piece around these two scientists, and their and my own bewilderment that we are going to lose a city like Miami (which I came to like much more than I thought I would), and that people simply don't know.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2013/10/21/rising-seas-long-form-rad.html/feed0Giant, rare "sea serpent" dragged to shore in Californiahttp://boingboing.net/2013/10/15/giant-rare-sea-serpent-dr.html
http://boingboing.net/2013/10/15/giant-rare-sea-serpent-dr.html#commentsTue, 15 Oct 2013 20:02:49 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=262177
Jasmine Santana of the Catalina Island Marine Institute was snorkeling off the coast about 20 miles southwest of L.A. when she spotted an 18-foot-long oarfish.]]>

Jasmine Santana of the Catalina Island Marine Institute was snorkeling off the coast about 20 miles southwest of L.A. when she spotted an 18-foot-long oarfish. It was dead. From the AP:

"We've never seen a fish this big," said Mark Waddington, senior captain of the Tole Mour, CIMI's sail training ship. "The last oarfish we saw was three feet long."

Because oarfish dive more than 3,000 feet deep, sightings of the creatures are rare and they are largely unstudied, according to CIMI…

The carcass was on display Tuesday for 5th, 6th, and 7th grade students studying at CIMI. It will be buried in the sand until it decomposes and then its skeleton will be reconstituted for display, Waddington said.

Icelandic news outlets are reporting that an Icelandic whaling company, Hvalur hf, "caught its first fin whale yesterday evening," after sailing out yesterday with two boats, both due back in port today.

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"Kristjan Loftsson, CEO of the the company Hvalur hf." Photo: News of Iceland.

Icelandic news outlets are reporting that an Icelandic whaling company, Hvalur hf, "caught its first fin whale yesterday evening," after sailing out yesterday with two boats, both due back in port today.

The whale quota is for 154 fin whales but 20% of unused quota from last season can be added to that number, so possibly a total of 180 whales will be caught. Since 2009 there has been in effect a five year licence to catch the species so that licence expires this year. All of the products from the fin whales will be sent to Japan, except for the fish meal and the fish oil, they are for human consumption. Around 200 people will be employed because of the whale hunting, at land and sea. The products will be processed at three locations in Iceland: Hvalfjord, Hafnarfjord and Akranes.

Susan Millward, executive director of AWI, said, “Contrary to statements from Icelandic government officials, these majestic animals, second in size only to blue whales, are not ‘Icelandic’; they belong to no one country. Fin whales are highly migratory, endangered, and are protected under a number of international treaties.Today’s killing of an endangered fin whale makes it absolutely clear that years of international diplomatic efforts have failed, and that Iceland is determined to act as a rogue whaling nation, no matter the cost to this species, and to the country’s own tourism and seafood industries.”

Fin whales are the second largest whale species after the blue whale. Iceland also hunts minke whales, a smaller species. That hunt began in May, and so far seven minke whales have been harpooned, whaling officials said.

The International Whaling Commission imposed a global moratorium on whaling in 1986 amid alarm at the declining stock of the marine mammals.
Iceland, which resumed commercial whaling in 2006, and Norway are the only two countries still openly practising commercial whaling in defiance of the moratorium.

Japan also hunts whales but insists this is only for scientific purposes even if most of the meat ends up on the market for consumption.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2013/06/18/iceland-resumes-whale-hunting.html/feed74Real shell as iPhone loudspeakerhttp://boingboing.net/2012/11/30/real-shell-as-iphone-loudspeak.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/11/30/real-shell-as-iphone-loudspeak.html#commentsFri, 30 Nov 2012 18:30:29 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=197527
Earlier this month, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design kindly brought me out to meet with grad students and attend the annual MCAD Art Sale where I was happily overwhelmed with a fantastic collection of student and recent graduates' work at affordable prices. Within minutes of walking in, I was drawn to two pieces at opposite ends of the building. The first was a painting created by a CNC milling machine outfitted with a pen. (That painting and its brethren in the series will be the subject of a later post here.) The second piece is what you can see above, the Shellphone Loudspeaker. Amazingly, it turned out that both the CNC painting and the Shellphone were created by the same young artist/designer/maker, Andrew Vomhof. The Shellphone Loudspeaker, made by Andrew with collaborator Karl Zinsmaster, is absolutely wonderful and I purchased one immediately. It's a real Whelk shell hand-carved to perfectly sit an iPhone (4 or 5). The shell acts as a natural amplifier for the iPhone's speakers.

Now, this thing doesn't come close to the output of powered speakers. Duh. But it does increase the volume quite a bit and layers the sound with a subtly echoey and organic vibe. But that isn't really the point. It's a wonderful curiosity at the intersection of nature, art, and technology. And it's beautiful to boot. Vomhof and Zinsmaster have launched a Kickstarter to bring their prototype design into full production. Pledge $60 and, if they hit their goal of $10,000, you'll receive your own Shellphone Loudspeaker early next year.

Henry Kaiser is kind of our man on the inside in Antarctica. He works there every year as a film maker, turning science into movies.

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Henry Kaiser is kind of our man on the inside in Antarctica. He works there every year as a film maker, turning science into movies. He sent this awesome Halloween greeting from underneath the sea ice.

Bonus: He also sent us a video taken at the same spot — only this has 100% fewer wacky masks and 100% more sea anemones.

When it comes to powers, he's no Superman. And he lacks Batman's popularity. But at the Southern Fried Science blog, perennial also-ran superhero Aquaman is at least able to inspire some fascinating discussion of science.

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When it comes to powers, he's no Superman. And he lacks Batman's popularity. But at the Southern Fried Science blog, perennial also-ran superhero Aquaman is at least able to inspire some fascinating discussion of science.

Marine biologist Andrew Thaler is on his second post about the science of Aquaman. Besides being just fascination information about the ocean and the creatures that live there, the posts also build a pretty good case for why we—the comic-book reading public—should care about Aquaman in the first place.

If Superman existed to show us how high the human spirit could fly, and Batman to show us the darkness within even our most noble, Aquaman is here to show us the world that triumphs in our absence. The ocean is not ours, and no matter how great our technology, we will never master it as we have mastered land, but Aquaman has. Through this lonely ocean wanderer, we can experience a world that we can never truly command.

...Aquaman is, for all intents and purposes, a marine mammal. And, with the exception of a healthy mane in later incarnations, he is effectively hairless. As a human, we would expect his internal body temperature to hover around 99°F, or about 37°C. Even at its warmest points, the surface temperature of the ocean around the equator is only about 80°F/27°C. At the poles ocean temperature can actually drop a few degrees below freezing. In the deep sea, ambient temperature levels out around 2 – 4°C. The ocean is cold, and water is a much better thermal conductor than air. Warm blooded species have evolved many different systems to manage these gradients, including countercurrent heat exchangers, insulating fur, and heavy layers of blubber.

Aquaman is not just a human, he is an incredibly buff human. Look at his picture. If the man has more than 2% body fat, I’d be shocked. In contrast, warm-water bottlenose dolphins have at least 18 to 20% body fat. Anyone who SCUBA dives knows that, even with a 12 millimeter neoprene wet suit, after a few hours in 80°F water, you get cold. Aquaman, lacking any visible insulation, should have slipped into hypothermia sometime early in More Fun Comics #73. He is better built for the beach than the frigid deep.

Photo: An oil removal ship is seen next to the Costa Concordia cruise ship as it ran aground off the west coast of Italy at Giglio island, January 16, 2012.

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Photo: An oil removal ship is seen next to the Costa Concordia cruise ship as it ran aground off the west coast of Italy at Giglio island, January 16, 2012. Over-reliance on electronic navigation systems and a failure of judgement by the captain are seen as possible reasons for one of the worst cruise liner disasters of all time, maritime specialists say. (REUTERS/ Max Rossi)

When I read hastily the headlines on Jan 14—a shipwreck in Italy, seventy missing, three known dead—I immediately thought: it must be the Africans again. The refugees, the clandestine, the invisible, the nameless, the unwanted… Those "less-than-human" people coming from all over the world to the Italian coast, looking for a safe haven from dictatorships, from hunger.

My Somali Italian friend Suad, who works with her community In Italy now, urges her people in Somalia NOT to take that dangerous ride: even if you survive the trip, what waits for you in Italy can be fatal. Italy is in deep economic crisis today, on the verge of bankruptcy and social disorder. The new government struggling to remain a G8 power while the euro and United Europe are at stake. Italy also struggles to overcome a big moral value crisis after twenty years of Berlusconi's reign of sexism, racism, indolence and corruption.

But I was wrong about the Africans. It was a fancy cruise ship full of wealthy foreigners that wrecked unexpectedly near the island of Giglio.

The splendid Costa Concordia was 290 meters long, and had thirteen decks. The ship featured thirteen bars, five restaurants, four swimming pools and five hundred balconied staterooms.

One woman survivor testified: "It was horrible! The foreign crew was screaming in their language in panic. We broke the glass and then we fought each other to get the lifejackets."

"While we were eating dinner, the first course, the plates started to flow, the glasses all of a sudden to run and then the lights went off. Then we fell on top of each other. People were stampeding while the ship was turning upside down. Now I am trying to find a friend I lost. Her cell phone is ringing but she is not answering."

A young Serbian girl who worked in the ship's gift shop recalled:

"We had to unleash the lifeboats ourselves: the instructors who had taught us how to do that jumped into the boats. There were no signs of ship officers to calm the passengers. Eighty-year-old people in a panic were shoving children, and mothers with babies in arms, in order to save themselves..."

When passing the isle of Giglio, cruise ships often greet the inhabitants of the island with a honk of the ship's horn. They say the habit dates back to an old Italian ship captain who was from Giglio and was bidding his home goodbye. From the land, the illuminated ship looks beautiful, and from the ship it's romantic to see the dark shape of an island speckled with lights. But for the Costa Concordia, everything went wrong.

Every tragedy becomes romantic if it's the last day of your life. All ships that sink carry the aura of the Titanic. All big disasters reveal the good and bad in people tested by adversity: people transform into heroes or cowards, and you never know who lurks within your own self at that ghastly hour.

A son of two elderly parents on the ship -- they had never left their home since their honeymoon years before -- personally came with his whole family to rescue them. He managed to save his mother, but for his father, it was too late.

A quiet Korean honeymoon couple was found alive after two days of fear, hunger and cold.

An Italian actress, also a survivor, said: "I was like an idiot, completely lost! When this ship tipped over on its side I tried to stop it with my feet!" In a further irony, this actress had once starred in a film about the famous sinking of the Andrea Doria.

There were four thousand people on that cruise ship: mostly Italian and French, but also tourists from many other nations. Students on a training course, hairdressers who had won a competition excursion worth 100 000 euros, many retired people, handicapped people and children. A floating Babel of different languages and cultures: a ghost nation.

Once the Costa Concordia showed her bad karma, of course it was recalled that on the day of her launch, the bottle of champagne smashed against her bow did not break.

A bad omen.

The captain of the ship was arrested and accused of manslaughter. He was charged with abandoning his position of command by cravenly saving himself, reaching the coast where he was found on a rock while his passengers fought for their lives.

The captain, in his distress, claims that his maps did not show the "Ghost Rock" on which his ship foundered: but his crew tells a different story. A deliberate decision to cruise far too close to the coast, to the bella isola di Giglio...to whistle a fond goodbye!

Naturally the Italian social networks spread their wisecracks: That's what happens when you hit the rock of Italy, the sinking country!

Other tourist cities in Italy like Venice are changing the security rules for cruise ships. A potential ecological disaster lingers: the fuel tanks in the carcass of the Costa Concordia might rupture.

My dear friend, Maja Mitic, an actress and activist from Belgrade, was aboard the Costa Concordia. She was there on her honeymoon, and to celebrate Serbian New Years. She wrote this on her Facebook profile:

"Dear friends, Ljuba and I are finally home.... after cruising seven days on Costa Concordia where we spend our last night, Friday the 13th of January, like on the movie Titanic... thank you all for your messages... What does not kill you, make you stronger!"

In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath.

The result is the brine sinks in a descending plume. But as this extremely cold brine leaves the sea ice, it freezes the relatively fresh seawater it comes in contact with. This forms a fragile tube of ice around the descending plume, which grows into what has been called a brinicle.

Check out that BBC website link for more information on how the Frozen Planet videographers captured this footage. That's also where you should go to watch the video when this YouTube version is inevitably taken down.

Anyone can climb down the ladder and watch us divers at work under the ice. The snow was bulldozed off of the sea ice around the observation tube, creating a very light environment; which seems to have attracted an enormous population of larval and juvenile ice fish that form great clouds around the tube."

]]>http://boingboing.net/2011/11/18/observation-tube-under-the-ant.html/feed14Love the ocean? Check this outhttp://boingboing.net/2011/11/04/love-the-ocean-check-this-out.html
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/04/love-the-ocean-check-this-out.html#commentsFri, 04 Nov 2011 16:17:52 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=127810The Scuttlefish, former-Gizmodo editor Brian Lam's newish blog about all things awesomely ocean, is looking for writers and interns.]]>The Scuttlefish, former-Gizmodo editor Brian Lam's newish blog about all things awesomely ocean, is looking for writers and interns. ]]>http://boingboing.net/2011/11/04/love-the-ocean-check-this-out.html/feed3Here be giant amoebashttp://boingboing.net/2011/10/24/here-be-giant-amoebas.html
http://boingboing.net/2011/10/24/here-be-giant-amoebas.html#commentsMon, 24 Oct 2011 18:19:17 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=125654there dwell amoebas of unusual size. Of course, "gigantic" is relative. Although they would dwarf other amoeba species, the biggest xenophyophores are a little more than 4 inches across.]]>there dwell amoebas of unusual size. Of course, "gigantic" is relative. Although they would dwarf other amoeba species, the biggest xenophyophores are a little more than 4 inches across. (Via A Moment of Science, which suggests, rightly, that this would make an excellent Halloween costume.)]]>http://boingboing.net/2011/10/24/here-be-giant-amoebas.html/feed18Surfing the red tidehttp://boingboing.net/2011/10/03/surfing-the-red-tide.html
http://boingboing.net/2011/10/03/surfing-the-red-tide.html#commentsMon, 03 Oct 2011 22:01:16 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=121582

Phytoplankton are tiny, plant-like organisms that live in the ocean and are, basically, at the very bottom of the food chain.

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Phytoplankton are tiny, plant-like organisms that live in the ocean and are, basically, at the very bottom of the food chain. But, sometimes, they get their revenge. When lots and lots and lots of phytoplankton get together, they can form what we call a "red tide," a discoloration of the water at a particular point where the plankton have become densely concentrated.

Some red tides are natural. Others happen when nutrient runoff from farm fertilizers creates a massive buffet for plankton. Some red tides can kill, as the plankton can produce toxins and their deaths reduce the oxygen content of the water. And sometimes, red tides glow in the dark.

The phytoplankton in this red tide off a California beach are bioluminescent. Their cells produce a chemical reaction that creates a soft, blue-green glow. It's basically the same thing that makes lightning bugs light. In this video by Loghan Call and Man's Best Media, you can see plankton light up in the beach (and a few surfers).

There's some very cool science history in the September issue of Physics Today, centering around a collection of analog computers, developed in the 19th century to predict tides. This was a job that human mathematicians could do, but the computing machines did the job faster and were less prone to small errors that had big, real-world implications. David Kaplan, an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee physics department, sent the links over. He says that these machines ended up being crucial and are a big, in-your-face reminder of the complications of living in a world without calculators:

"... it was particularly important during WWII in order to properly plan beach landings, but even without the war part I found it fascinating. We take this so for granted now, that we can crank out sin() and cos() values instantly, but that was not always the case."

As an Allied cross-channel invasion loomed in 1944, Rommel, convinced that it would come at high tide, installed millions of steel, cement, and wooden obstacles on the possible invasion beaches, positioned so they would be under water by midtide.

The Allies would certainly have liked to land at high tide, as Rommel expected, so their troops would have less beach to cross under fire. But the underwater obstacles changed that. The Allied planners now decided that initial landings must be soon after low tide so that demolition teams could blow up enough obstacles to open corridors through which the following landing craft could navigate to the beach. The tide also had to be rising, because the landing craft had to unload troops and then depart without danger of being stranded by a receding tide.

There were also nontidal constraints. For secrecy, Allied forces had to cross the English Channel in darkness. But naval artillery needed about an hour of daylight to bombard the coast before the landings. Therefore, low tide had to coincide with first light, with the landings to begin one hour after. Airborne drops had to take place the night before, because the paratroopers had to land in darkness. But they also needed to see their targets, so there had to be a late-rising Moon. Only three days in June 1944 met all those requirements for “D-Day,” the invasion date: 5, 6, and 7 June.

What are all those frothy bubbles rising from the sea floor and coating the submersible craft in this video? Why, it's liquid carbon dioxide, venting off an underwater hot spring connected to Eifuku volcano in Japan's Volcano Islands.

... pay attention at 38 seconds into the show. With utter disregard for the extraordinary environment a shrimp-like creature swims purposefully under the robot and exits stage lower right. It may not live in liquid CO2, but it doesn’t seem bothered by it in the slightest. We must also assume that it’s finding plenty of food within this bubbling environment.

I've been traveling for the last couple of weeks. One key stop: Woods Hole, Mass., where I got up close and personal with everybody's favorite research submarine.

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I've been traveling for the last couple of weeks. One key stop: Woods Hole, Mass., where I got up close and personal with everybody's favorite research submarine. Originally commissioned in 1964, Alvin is currently disassembled as part of a regular maintenance inspection and overhaul. I got to go behind-the-scenes to check out Alvin and the RV Oceanus—a research ship also operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. This is a window on Alvin's old manned pod, a massive sphere that can hold two scientists. It's being replaced in the current retrofit, and this sphere will go to the Smithsonian. More photos to come ...

]]>http://boingboing.net/2011/09/12/hello-alvin.html/feed3Human disease kills coralhttp://boingboing.net/2011/08/19/human-disease-kills-coral.html
http://boingboing.net/2011/08/19/human-disease-kills-coral.html#commentsFri, 19 Aug 2011 20:42:51 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=114436One of the causes behind Caribbean coral die-offs seems to be a bacteria, spread from humans to the coral through sewage.]]>One of the causes behind Caribbean coral die-offs seems to be a bacteria, spread from humans to the coral through sewage. It's the first time that a human disease has ever been shown to kill an invertebrate. ]]>http://boingboing.net/2011/08/19/human-disease-kills-coral.html/feed9Japanese tsunami and the birth of icebergshttp://boingboing.net/2011/08/08/japanese-tsunami-and-the-birth-of-icebergs.html
http://boingboing.net/2011/08/08/japanese-tsunami-and-the-birth-of-icebergs.html#commentsMon, 08 Aug 2011 17:35:40 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=112447Scientists have long speculated that large tsunamis could be linked to the calving of icebergs—where chunks of ice break off of the side of a glacier or ice shelf and float away.]]>

Scientists have long speculated that large tsunamis could be linked to the calving of icebergs—where chunks of ice break off of the side of a glacier or ice shelf and float away. The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that happened in March off the coast of Japan finally gave them much more direct evidence of this phenomenon. Fascinating stuff, and a great reminder of how interconnected the world really is.

Beachgoers in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, were met with a fuzzy, green blanket of ocean last week, as the water there exploded with algae.

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Beachgoers in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, were met with a fuzzy, green blanket of ocean last week, as the water there exploded with algae.

You've heard before about dead zones. These are patches of coastal ocean where river runoff full of fertilizer chemicals have produced massive algae blooms. As the algae die, their decomposition reduces the oxygen level of the water to the point that many fish and other aquatic life can no longer live there.

It's worth noting, when I pulled this photo out of the Reuters files, I could see similar shots, taken on the same beach, in 2010, 2009, and 2008. This isn't a fluke. It's an endemic problem.

Image: REUTERS/China Daily China Daily Information Corp - CDIC

]]>http://boingboing.net/2011/07/28/algae-beach-party.html/feed20Swim goggles made from fish scaleshttp://boingboing.net/2011/07/25/swim-goggles-made-from-fish-scales.html
http://boingboing.net/2011/07/25/swim-goggles-made-from-fish-scales.html#commentsMon, 25 Jul 2011 21:24:17 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=110639Neat post about an experimental plastic substitute made from fish scales over at Brian Lam's ocean-themed blog Scuttlefish. So far art student Erik de Laurens "has made not only goggles, but eye-glass frames, drinking cups, and a wooden table with a fish scale inlay" from fish scales.]]>